AuthorTopic: Can lawyers be outsourced? (Read 9035 times)

I have to strongly disagree with you. Most of the innovations that we take for granted in the modern world came from the West, not China. You can add to that list liberal political and economic thought (individualism, representative government, human rights, laissez-faire economics), which were foreign to East Asia until this century.

To truly understand how backward Chinese society and technology was, I'd recommend you read the great Chinese writer Lu Xun's novel, Yao (Medicine). It's an interesting story and I think you will change your mind after you read it.

Well, I would have to strongly disagree with your strong disagreement!

I have actually read some of Lu Xun's works including excerps from Medicine. I would admit that Lu Xun was a greatly influential thinker and writer during the Cultural Revolution, but his strong advocation for modernization and disdain for past traditional Chinese ways leaves things a tad biased, at least in my humble opinion.

But beyond that, China's movement to modernize through the incorporation of western technology does not dispell the great innovations previously made, especially during times where the Chinese were so much further ahead in their thinking than the rest of the world.

If I had to choose whose innovations were greater...the culture who originated the concepts, or the culture who later took those innovations and built upon them even further, I would choose the former.

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"Those who want the Government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit are like men who are so afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide to avoid assassination." - Harry S. Truman

RE: One thing that has always confused me is when we outsource jobs, what jobs replace those that have been outsourced. If we are eliminating a whole class of jobs, what new class of jobs is created to replace it. Are we just relying on normal solid economic growth to replace those jobs?

That's the million dollar question. When the economy would "creatively" destroy and create jobs in the past, it did so because the next new thing was what was creatively destroying the out-dated jobs. For instance, refrigeration did away with the guy who delivered giant blocks of ice. The guy who delivered ice lost his job, but could get a better job as a refrigerator repair man. The new theory is that corporations will be flush with money and will eventually get around to reinvesting the money in new and better jobs here in the USA. I'm not going to hold my breath.

Off-shoring is "creatively" destroying jobs without any next new thing. As someone who's seen it first-hand, I think it looks more like mindless cannibalism than a positive new paradigm shift. People who lose their jobs due to offshoring almost always have to take a different job that pays much, much less money.

Everyone is going into nursing and sales --- Until even those fields get crowded out.

A country that only consumes, and doesn't make anything, is sure to eventually have one helluva day of reckoning.

let's take a look at this, seeing as no one else has decided to call you on your bullsh*t.

China is the most populated nation state, with more citizens than any other single country; being there's more people in China, than say, France, there's more geniuses in China and therefore China's smartest person is undoubtedly smarter than France's smartest person.

Your post used that same logic. Let's look at it another way now, and see how your logic destroys itself.

China has a population of roughly 1.5 billion. Quite impressive. Interesting though, because when all the other nations combine their populations, they have substantially more people than China. This is where it gets fun: if the rest of the world has more people than China, then it follows, from your flawed logic, that the rest of the world has more geniuses, and, therefore, the smartest person in that rest of the world crowd is smarter than China's smartest person. But what if that smartest person happened to live in France? How could that be?! OMG--but the numbers game doesn't lie, right!?

I presume you were joking, though, because your whole line of thought with that post was quite absurd.

There are so many Indians that there will be a higher incidence of brilliant lawyers. Pure numbers game. Four times the population as the US equals four times as many geniuses, some of which will become lawyers.

My guess is that there is an Indian guy(s)/gal(s) that is(are) smarter than any US guy/gal. Don't underestimate them is all I'm saying. However, with China, you might have a point, since English is not a primary language.

Where do I start? Why do I start? I take it you know very little about probability. You must have failed the statistics classes, if you ever even took one. I think you like to argue, for the sake of arguing, and, in the end, making yourself look more foolish.

I guess when you tell someone that you ARE meeting at a bar; you should really be saying you MIGHT meet at a bar, since you COULD get into an accident on the way preventing you from arriving? Geez... Of course, there is the POSSIBILITY that there would be a smarter person in a country with a population a fraction of another. But is it LIKELY? You can stand on your toothpick soap box now, if you want, but, you really should quit embarrasing yourself over picayune details everyone, but you, understands.

BTW, I did not forget my post. It was dealing with India versus the US. NOT China versus the rest of the world!!! We won't get into what you've forgotten. It might take awhile.

Let's get back to the topic.

I deleted my original response to this because it was a knee-jerk reaction and the argument contained therein meandered quite a bit. I apologize

Your argument, and the method used to prove your position, is lousy because it assumes (quite INCORRECTLY) that there's only ONE factor contributing to the incidence of intelligent persons within any given country: THE NUMBER OF THE PEOPLE.

East Los Angeles is a specific part of a much larger metropolitan city. I believe the population of it alone hovers around 300thousand or so. Iowa City has a population of about 60 thousand--roughly 1/5th the population of East Los Angeles. Using your method, clearly East LA should have a higher number of persons with a 4year degree than Iowa City, right? I bet you find the very opposite is true.

Here's another example for you. India has 4x our population, as you so astutely pointed out before--yet the US has FAR more billionaires. How can this be, mr. numbers game? I'll tell you: because there are other factors contributing to this fact. Ever consider that, tough guy?

The incidence of intelligent persons in a given population is no different: number alone isn't the only factor.

I'm not arguing that China does or doesn't have the most intelligent people or a greater quantity of them than any other country, I'm simply saying your method of proving it is completely ignorant.

It's nice you can make assumptions about my personality and character through the veil of an internet argument. Now let me make one about you: you belittle people with ad hominem attacks when the lousy method you use to argue a point is exposed as the bullsh*t it is. Is this your only way of retaining self confidence?

No hard feelings, though. I always thought you were a positive contributor to this forum.

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mxpocc

RE: One thing that has always confused me is when we outsource jobs, what jobs replace those that have been outsourced. If we are eliminating a whole class of jobs, what new class of jobs is created to replace it. Are we just relying on normal solid economic growth to replace those jobs?

That's the million dollar question. When the economy would "creatively" destroy and create jobs in the past, it did so because the next new thing was what was creatively destroying the out-dated jobs. For instance, refrigeration did away with the guy who delivered giant blocks of ice. The guy who delivered ice lost his job, but could get a better job as a refrigerator repair man. The new theory is that corporations will be flush with money and will eventually get around to reinvesting the money in new and better jobs here in the USA. I'm not going to hold my breath.

Off-shoring is "creatively" destroying jobs without any next new thing. As someone who's seen it first-hand, I think it looks more like mindless cannibalism than a positive new paradigm shift. People who lose their jobs due to offshoring almost always have to take a different job that pays much, much less money.

Everyone is going into nursing and sales --- Until even those fields get crowded out.

A country that only consumes, and doesn't make anything, is sure to eventually have one helluva day of reckoning.

You're absolutely correct. An article I read recently pointed to the fact that the United States is becoming a service oriented economy. In other words, those high quality tech jobs and well-paying labor jobs that are getting outsourced are being replaced by minimum wage Wal-Mart-esque gigs.

I like your example of the icebox guy/refrigerator repair man. that's definitely an upgrade in jobs. moving from manufacturing a product to working as a salesperson selling that product is definitely a downgrade

Interesting Paperbackwriter. If companies had incentives to invest their increased profits instead of using it to pump up stock value and give higher executive salaries then maybe the negative effects of outsourcing would be lessened. That said its very hard today will affect tomorrow. In Clinton's book My Life I remember he talked about how the 1980's hurt the middle class in that it allowed a few middle class to move up to upper middle class and pushed a much larger portion of the middle class into the lower middle class. I wonder if that is a long term trend and outsourcing is part of it. Mxpocc, you are absolutely correct. Athens, which probably had a free citzenry around the size of iowa city, put out geniuses by the dozens in its golden age, which was less than a century. Unprecedented. That said I would lay off Hegel, that person usually writes intelligent things and I think their point was about the potential of India though Hegel used a weak example to support it.

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2008 graduate of William and Mary Law School

mxpocc

Mxpocc, you are absolutely correct. Athens, which probably had a free citzenry around the size of iowa city, put out geniuses by the dozens in its golden age, which was less than a century. Unprecedented. That said I would lay off Hegel, that person usually writes intelligent things and I think their point was about the potential of India though Hegel used a weak example to support it.

Thanks. And I never meant to argue against the potential of India--just that his method undermined the argument considerably.

I agree about Hegel, too. He's a quality LSDer--though I doubt he comes from a country whose population dictates the amount of quality internet forum posters it produces

I have to strongly disagree with you. Most of the innovations that we take for granted in the modern world came from the West, not China. You can add to that list liberal political and economic thought (individualism, representative government, human rights, laissez-faire economics), which were foreign to East Asia until this century.

To truly understand how backward Chinese society and technology was, I'd recommend you read the great Chinese writer Lu Xun's novel, Yao (Medicine). It's an interesting story and I think you will change your mind after you read it.

Well, I would have to strongly disagree with your strong disagreement!

I have actually read some of Lu Xun's works including excerps from Medicine. I would admit that Lu Xun was a greatly influential thinker and writer during the Cultural Revolution, but his strong advocation for modernization and disdain for past traditional Chinese ways leaves things a tad biased, at least in my humble opinion.

But beyond that, China's movement to modernize through the incorporation of western technology does not dispell the great innovations previously made, especially during times where the Chinese were so much further ahead in their thinking than the rest of the world.

If I had to choose whose innovations were greater...the culture who originated the concepts, or the culture who later took those innovations and built upon them even further, I would choose the former.

Interesting Paperbackwriter. If companies had incentives to invest their increased profits instead of using it to pump up stock value and give higher executive salaries then maybe the negative effects of outsourcing would be lessened. That said its very hard today will affect tomorrow. In Clinton's book My Life I remember he talked about how the 1980's hurt the middle class in that it allowed a few middle class to move up to upper middle class and pushed a much larger portion of the middle class into the lower middle class. I wonder if that is a long term trend and outsourcing is part of it. Mxpocc, you are absolutely correct. Athens, which probably had a free citzenry around the size of iowa city, put out geniuses by the dozens in its golden age, which was less than a century. Unprecedented. That said I would lay off Hegel, that person usually writes intelligent things and I think their point was about the potential of India though Hegel used a weak example to support it.

If you want to call the movement of factory work to overseas countries, then, yes, I think offshoring caused that.

Now, that kind of offshoring fits with the creative destruction model. In the 80s, you could get a college degree in engineering and have what looked like a lifetime of interesting and well-paid work. That's not the case, now. Many college students are turning away from engineering because they don't want to deal with losing their jobs to someone who works for 1/5th what an American can live on.

I think accounting will be the next white collar profession to get whacked by offshoring.

The mere fact that China is one of the largest violators of human/labor rights should be cause enough for not doing trade or business with China, not to mention the fact that the US has vowed to stand up to countries who oppress and deny basic rights to its people. Throw in that Chinia owns 75% of our nation's debt, and is now positioning itself to purchase one of our largest oil companies, UniCal...watch out!

But these don't matter, it's about the issues right?

Yep, in about 25 years, we will all be speaking Chinese.

1. Technically they're not in violation of anything because they don't have these rights/laws on the books. Also, many Chinese would argue that if there was a list of priorities, they'd prefer to fulfill their basic needs by being able to afford food and other necessities, rather than speak out against their government. As long as their incomes are increasing, they do not mind the current state of affairs.